Rūta Vitkauskaitė (b. 1984) graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (2009), composition class of Prof. Vytautas Barkauskas. She also studied composition at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance with Prof. Ari Ben-Shabetai (2007), participated in the 3rd Workshop for Young Composers in Dundaga (Latvia, 2006), the Dartington International Summer School Composition Courses (England, 2007 and 2011), the 4th Workshop for Young Composers in Maszalaca (Latvia, 2008), the 14th and 15th Young Composers Meetings in Apeldoorn (The Netherlands, 2008, 2009), the 18th Workshop for Composers in Trebnitz (Germany, 2009), the New Music Incubator Latvia (2010). During her studies she participated in numerous new music festivals in Lithuania and abroad, including YOUrope Together (Essen, Germany, 2008), Gaudeamus Music Week (Amsterdam, 2008), Aldeburgh Festival (England, 2008). In 2008 the composer was awarded (together with four other composers from the New Opera Action Festival) the prize for the best stage work at the annual Lithuanian Composers’ Union competition (for the opera Juliet and Juliet). Presently she is continuing her composition studies at the London Royal Academy of Music with Prof. Philip Cashian.
Rūta Vitkauskaitė is also performing musician (violin, piano, voice, electronics), a member of R&R Electronics, Music Is Very Important, and Operomanija collectives, an organizer of many new music events in Lithuania, among them: international contemporary music festival Druskomanija in Druskininkai, network of contemporary music workshops The PROCESS in Vilnius.
Rūta Vitkauskaitė’s work shows a powerful basis of irrational intuition, hard to describe soundscapes resembling archetypes – the shapes of the collective unconscious. The composer often combines the language of contemporary academic music, elements of ethnic and ritual music of different cultures (African tribes, shamans of the North, Georgians, Arabs and Jews, or the Lithuanian laments), or the sounds of experimental electronics. Her eccentric music often resembles natural forces, seemingly unorganised and chaotic formations, sticking together into a highly dynamic, vital and unpredictable whole, always generating an active emotion.
